U.S. Offers Access to Markets
To Spur Financial-Services Pact

By

Robert S. Greenberger Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated July 14, 1997 2:39 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON -- In a new effort to spur global financial-services talks, the U.S. Monday offered the allure of its vast market to foreign banks and securities and insurance firms in exchange for equivalent access by U.S. companies to overseas markets.

The Clinton administration is making its latest offer, in Geneva, in the hopes that the world's trading nations will complete a financial-services pact by a Dec. 12 deadline. Negotiations bogged down two years ago, when the U.S. held back offering full access to its market,...